Towards Pedagogy of Shadow and Awaking (inspirations from Hesse’s novels)

Abstract

The article is a result of an effort to reach an answer concerning necessity to promote a holistic approach in humanities and to implement a pedagogical postulat to treat in an integral way each human being as an active and creative subjectivity. The task is implemented within a research program of digging out „pedagogy from cultural contexts”, that is discovering and demonstrating the pedagogical potential and attractivenes of symbolic interior of various cultural texts. The main motives of the article oscillate around the notions of: initiation, spiritual rebirth, individuation, psychopedagogy of Shadow, mythes, secret voices (demian), integrity of pedagogy, psychic completeness (fullness) of a person. Our aim is to propose a closer approach to make explicit terminology, ideas and generative metaphores for methodological application, like for instance the unavoidable destruction of the structure of surrounding world, category of Shadow as a lost dimension of the world and human individual existence, or the concept of symbolic death as a phenomenon restoring value of life through understanding and acceptance of its full revitalizing of tragic potential (tragedy). Literary illustrations, stemming from Hermann Hesse’s novels, read within the key interpretation based on the depth psychology, are recalled in form of pedagogical initiations, for a preliminary at least transposing them as tentative pedagogical hypotheses. Emphasis put on the value of human Shadow and the Shadow of (in and for) pedagogy is aimed at a direct indication of a sphere of an old/new problematic in pedagogy and has to consitute an idea and an imagination of the pedagogy of Shadow.